Actor Iain Robertson’s latest theatreeatre project is the stage adaptation of the 1990s TV hit, Takin’ Over The Asylum. Here, he talks to Markark Brown about his admiration for its writer, Donna Franceschild, the stigma of mental illness ... and how he wa
SCOTLAND’S finest actors make their names on the national stage and then, when Hollywood or West End London producers come a-calling, they bid farewell to old Caledonia and fly off in pursuit of fame and fortune. That, at least, is the received wisdom. And, like much received wisdom, it is often wrong.
Screen star Iain Robertson – who returns to the Scottish stage in Donna Franceschild’s Takin’ Over The Asylum ( a co- production between Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum and Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre) – defies the pessimistic common sense. Although he made his name as a movie actor at the tender age of 15, when he starred in Gillies and Billy MacKinnon’s award-winning film Small Faces, and has since played in such films as Plunkett & Macleane, The Debt Collector and Basic Instinct 2, the 31-year-old actor is often to be found treading the boards of his home country.
In 2009, Robertson, who hails from Govan, starred in the Lyceum’s adaptation of James Hogg’s Confessions Of A Justified Sinner. Last year he wooed critics and audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe with a brilliant solo performance in Ronan O’Donnell’s Angels at the Traverse.
Nevertheless, it is perhaps appropriate that Robertson’s latest Scottish stage project is the child of a screen drama. Takin’ Over The Asylum is American writer Franceschild’s stage adaptation of her ownn much-loved 1994 TV series of the same name,me, whichwhich starredstarred KenKen Stott (as put-putupon Glasgowasgow mental hospital DJ, Eddie) and a youngung David Tennant. Not only that, but Robertsonertson acted, at the age of just 14, in the series’es’ sequel, A Mug’s Game.
SO when the call came from the Lyceum offering him the role of Eddie, he accepted with enthusiasm, he tells me when we meet at the Edinburgh theatre. A great admirerr of both Franceschild and, he is delighteded to be working with them both again, and is particularly impressed by Franceschild’schild’s adaptation.
“Donnana is phenomenal at structure,” he says.. “Her script feels like a play. It doesn’t feel completely different [from the TV show],w], it’s got the same soul, but it’s a completete piece in and of itself. It doesn’t feel like six hours of telly condensed into two hoursrs of theatre.”
Whichh is not to say that Robertson has been lookingoking back at the TV series. “I haven’t gone back to it recently, because I didn’t want it to colour what I would be doing with it,” he explains. “I must have been 13 at the time the show went out. I was getting into the business then, so I was NOISE in its many forms is music to the ears of Gourock trio Galoshins: heavy prog, krautrock, metal, punk, math rock, avant-garde jazz ... The sound that comes out the other end has been described as “aggro-pop”, and that might have to do for now, as my mental filing system can’t come up with anything better for this time-travel collision between 1970s’ Detroit guitars, 1960s’ Los Angeles organ and 2010s’ Inverclyde vocals. EP1 was recorded in July 2011 and subsequently self-released. EP2 took them back to the studio in April 2012 and now sees light of day, alongside its newly promoted predecessor, on Glasgow’s bold Armellodie label. There are plans are to record another couple of EPs, but no album on the imminent horizon. However, the combined 11 tracks here sit together rather nicely as a unit. At the core, it’s psychedelic garage punk that refuses to be bound by such petty things as traditional song structures, instead hammering individual tracks into shape through electrifying bursts of melody and madcap energy. THIS glorious new recording of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures From An Exhibition, coupled with Prokofiev’s punchy Sarcasms and enthralling Visions Fugitives miniatures, is a colossus of a disc and a superlative production from the Hyperion Records team. The depth, breadth and sonic splendour of the disc make it a defining recording of a piano classic. There are many recordings of Pictures, but this one is special. You don’t need me to tell you how good Osborne is, but I will say this: he strides purposefully into the exhibition and his characterisations of individual pictures are extraordinarily vivid. Just a hint: you will feel the amazing weight of those heavy, dragging wheels of No 4 Bydlo (A Polish Ox Cart); you will recoil in horror at the imperious arrogance of the first Polish Jew and in embarrassment at the snivelling second. You will be silenced at the atmosphere in The Catacombs, one of the weirdest places on Earth, and stunned by the golden majesty of the Great Gate of Kiev. A vintage Osborne performance. Michael Tumelty